I second the Hillel Wayne article, and the whole series he wrote on the subject. It's a really good exploration of what engineering looks like in different disc

I second the Hillel Wayne article, and the whole series he wrote on the subject. It's a really good exploration of what engineering looks like in different disciples, what software engineering can learn from other engineering disciplines, and what other discipline can learn from us. I think people hear engineering and jump immediately to a handful of big professions like aerospace, or civil engineering, and build their view of engineering entirely based on that: very controlled, very life-or-death, everything needs to be done correctly, etc. But that's kind of like assuming that what Google is doing is representative of all software engineering. And while it's true that software engineering is probably one of the less mature branches of engineering, there are things that we do a lot better than other disciplines, like change management (i.e. git), or automated testing.